14 Pound Baby Joel Brandon Jr. May be Heaviest Baby Born in US This Year

14 Pound Baby Joel Brandon Jr. May be Heaviest Baby Born in US This Year
(Sara Brandon)
Zachary Stieber
10/31/2013
Updated:
7/18/2015

14 pound baby Joel Brandon Jr. (JJ), born to Sarah Brandon, may be the heaviest baby born in the United States this year.

“When he came out and they put him on the scale and it said 14 pounds even, I was very shocked, to say the least,” Brandon told broadcaster KSL.

Joel suffered some respiratory problems after being born via c-section for about a week and a half, but he has been healthy ever since.

Sarah Brandon believes the huge baby may stem from the fact that diabetes that runs in her and her husband’s families.

But she doesn’t mind at all. 

“He’s my cuddly, chunky baby,” she said. 

And he’s growing. He weighed 23 pounds at his recent four month checkup.

Joel was so big that two doctors delivered the baby instead of the typical one, and Joel was “so big and crammed in there that they had a hard time getting him out,” Sarah Brandon told the Huffington Post. 

“(The doctor) said he’ll be a normal, healthy boy as he grows; he’ll probably just be a big, tall guy but he’ll probably slim down as he gets into his toddler years,” she said.

On the other hand, her two girls--twins--were born at 4 pounds each. The girls are now two years old, and love playing with their new little brother. 

The whole family is having a great time together. The girls have put baby powder and Vaseline all over him while they’re playing with him, and they like to hold him, but he is too heavy for them to hold alone without their mom’s help.

Joel is “so sweet, just the happiest guy,” Brandon said. “He laughs all of the time and he is just very calm, which he probably has to be with his crazy toddler sisters. We feel very, very lucky to have him.”